


Coup de Foudre

by zigostia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Thunderstorms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-04 03:45:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14584245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zigostia/pseuds/zigostia
Summary: There's a storm coming in.





	Coup de Foudre

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bringmayflowers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bringmayflowers/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! You wrote your first Johnlock fic for mine, so it's only fair for me to repay the favour. Special thanks to [ensorcel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ensorcel) for the moral support. Enjoy!

A low rumble rolled through the ground. Low-lying clouds streaked across an ashy sky.

John glanced up at them with a worried eye. “There’s a storm coming in,” he said.

Sherlock didn't turn around. “Don’t sound so frightened.”

“I’m not frightened,” John said. A vision popped into his head, one of Sherlock’s eyebrow quirking up, and he scowled, dashing it away.

“I’m not frightened,” he tried again, “I’m just being _smart._ Frankly, wandering about in the forest during a lightning storm isn’t very smart.”

“You’re frightened,” Sherlock affirmed, and sped up.

John jogged to catch up. “Do you ever feel like this is all a bit one-sided?”

Sherlock didn’t respond, which was all the answer John needed, really.

The foliage around them thickened as they moved deeper into the woods. Leaves quivered in the brisk spring breeze and fell from their branches, twirling and fluttering down. The rumbling over their heads grew to a constant tremor, the clouds dark and foreboding, smeared across the horizon; grey paint on a grey canvas.

John opened his mouth, and was suddenly interrupted as the rumbling crested and broke in a crash of thundering waves. The wind picked up, ruffling his hair, sending a chill down his body, followed by the inevitable wet spray on the back of his neck.

John cast a weary gaze to the sky. The fates were truly cruel.

He caught up to Sherlock, passed him, then turned around and began walking backwards. “What did I tell you,” he said accusingly.

Sherlock looked slightly amused. “Do you really have a fear of thunderstorms?”

“I have a fear of _getting struck by lightning.”_ John took another step back and his foot was met with a particularly-protruding tree root. He had enough time to think _Shit_ before he felt his balance crumble away, arms pinwheeling, his body falling back—

He stopped before he hit the ground.

John looked up to see Sherlock grinning down at him, lanky arms wrapped snug around his waist.

“You’re welcome,” Sherlock said.

“Shut up,” John muttered.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. “Ungrateful.”

John huffed out a laugh. The corner of Sherlock’s mouth tilted up.

They dwindled into a silence, interrupted by the growing clamour of the rain, the pitter-patter like pebbles on a tin roof. A faintly dusty scent of petrichor rose up into the air, earthy and full. The dull roar of thunder hovered over the sky, murmuring a quiet warning.

Sherlock’s arms lingered around John’s waist. His coat billowed around them, whipped by the wind. Rain trickled down from John’s hair onto his lashes, a blink sending them into his eyes.

John’s breath came shallow as he brought a clumsy smile to his face, placing a hand on Sherlock’s chest and lightly pushing him away, taking an unsteady step back. He tried to speak and made a small croak instead. He cleared his throat.

“Right,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair, feeling the moisture stick onto his fingers. “Well, this storm’s only getting worse. Finally feel like telling me why we’re here?”

“I’ll let you figure it out,” Sherlock murmured, eyes fixed on a point in the distance.

“Oh, for god’s sake.” John craned his neck to the direction of Sherlock’s gaze.

His breath caught in his throat. On cue, the world suddenly flashed, a camera shutter going off in a blink of blinding light.

“A cell tower,” John said. Thunder boomed.

John grabbed Sherlock’s arm, forcing him into a standstill.

“Are you insane?” he hissed, fingers five points of firm pressure digging into Sherlock’s coat. “No, don’t answer that. Of course you are—” (John was, too, he’d accepted that a while back)— “I just didn’t think it was to such an extent.”

Sherlock scowled and peeled John’s fingers off his arm in a manner that reminded John, rather abruptly, of someone picking a strand of hair from their food. (Lovely.)

“A suspect in a murder involving fire has been found with singed clothing,” Sherlock said. “He has stated this as being from touching a cell tower while it was being struck. The way the clothing is singed is remarkable, and brings up many questions that may confirm to his alibi. I need to test this theory.”

“That’s…” John scrambled for the right words through the stampede suddenly rampaging through his mind, accompanied with the whistling wind and the growing storm, noises and distractions (danger) all around. “That is incredibly stupid.”

Sherlock’s gaze turned irritable. “We will simply be observing. I can study the way the grass has been scorched near the cell tower in order to predict a likely outcome on clothes.”

“That’s not the point,” John said. “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. I went to Dagar, once, when I was abroad. Lightning storm just like this, a man was killed on the spot.”

“The lightning is most certainly going to strike the cell tower. There is a grounding wire. We will be thirty feet away. Almost guaranteed non-fatal.”

“Almost,” John repeated.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “John, when does anything we do not have a slight chance of us dying?”

For a long time, there was only the downpour crashing down on them, the storm hurtling across the sky.

“You really are mad, aren’t you?” John said, barely audible.

Sherlock smiled, eyes glinting in a way that really shouldn’t do what it did to John. “Don’t act like you’re not enjoying this.”

John opened his mouth, closed it again.

“God help me,” he said, helplessly.

Sherlock’s smile broadened, turned askew. “Come on, then,” he said.

John shook his head, muttered a curse at Sherlock but directed it towards himself, and followed.

-+-+-+-

The ground was muddy beneath his feet, the damp seeping into his socks. The rain poured down in thick, heavy sheets, draping the world in a sleek dark coat.

Sherlock stopped them near the tree line, just shy of the hill.

He pointed to the cell tower. “It’s built with a ground wire that directs an electrical current to the ground. Perfectly sound, but…” Sherlock glanced over to John. “Best to be safe.”

He redirected his index finger towards a small building, near the foot of the hill. “There’s a defibrillator on the wall,” he said. “Fetch it. I have to stay to observe.”

John frowned, reluctant. “You sure?”

“That you can take your eyes off me for two minutes without myself getting killed? Relatively, yes.”

“Really?” John muttered, even as he started to turn away, casting one final look at Sherlock before heading for the hill.

There was, like Sherlock had said, a defibrillator mounted onto the far wall of the building. John watched it for a moment, the green LED blinking, and then opened the panel and took the handle into his left hand.

He turned around, eyes scanning over the edge of the trees, where tall foliage merged with grassy plains.

Sherlock wasn’t there.

Feeling his heart simultaneously sink to the bottom of his stomach and leap to the top of his throat, John took his gaze to the hill.

Sherlock stood, a lone figure, his usual towering stance shadowed, low and miniscule compared to the cell tower looming next to him.

“Sherlock,” John whispered, then, _“Sherlock!”_

Sherlock turned his head, cast a look at John that could not be distinguished through the storm, heavy rain blurring his features.

Turning back to face the cell tower, Sherlock reached out a hand and curled his fingers around the metal.

John ran.

His shoes slapped on the muddy ground, the defibrillator hitting his leg with every step, the rain slamming down, turning the world into a wet, hazy murk. He ran, blinded and deafened, stumbling over rocks, tree roots turned damp and soft. The wind screamed in his ears. His chest heaved as he sucked in shallow, sulphur-tinged breaths, speckled with droplets of rain.

His vision cleared; he was at the top of the hill.

Sherlock turned, hair plastered down his forehead, water running in rivulets down the sharp contours of his face. His eyes were calm, but there was something slightly bright and vaguely wild swirling within.

“What the _hell,_ Sherlock!” John shouted over the screaming of the wind. He grabbed Sherlock’s arm.

Sherlock wrenched it away. “I need to know the full effects of a lighting strike. The scorch marks are too difficult to predict.” His voice was gunmetal grey, smooth steady steel, but thin over the sounds of the storm.

John held on tight, fingers digging into sharp bone. “What if he’s the murderer and made this up? What if this kills you?”

Sherlock denied John’s pleas, clutching to the cell tower like it was a lifeline and not the opposite. “Then you, John, will have to commit him as guilty for his crimes. Besides, you’ve always cherished the thought of honesty and humanity among the people. Maybe it’s time to test that theory.”

John opened his mouth to speak when he felt a tingle shoot up his spine.

He had known it before, back in Dager. Dry thunder, a strike quite literally out of the blue; desert storms were rarely accompanied by rain. They had learned to recognize the signs of an impending strike, his body sending out a positive charge, attracted by the electrons in the clouds. It felt like hovering his hand over an old sixteen-inch satellite tv—only spread throughout his entire body and amplified tenfold. A shiver down his neck, ghosting breath, hair standing on end—the barely-there buzz, a flickering crackle—a telltale sign.

Sherlock’s eyes widened, then narrowed, his face turning grim as he tightened his grip on the tower.

John reached for it, prying pale, thin fingers with a ferocious determination. Sherlock let out an impatient snarl.

“You do realize,” Sherlock hissed, “that if both people get struck, there will be no one to save us?”

“That,” John said, “is the most ridiculous argument I have ever heard. We have to get out of here right now.”

Sherlock had the utter gall to roll his eyes. “You have the defibrillator. You have a cell phone, and _excellent_ reception.” He grinned.

The buzzing grew more insistent. John was sliding down a hot plastic slide in the midsummer heat, feeling the static of his skin pop and fizzle against metal screws. He was a volunteer at the front of the room, standing on an insulated stool next to a Van de Graaff generator, feeling the fuzzy force field of electrons building up, thrumming against his bright orange camp t-shirt. He was back in Dagar, feeling the buzz and the crackle, the hair on the back of his neck standing straight. The man’s shirt had caught on fire—he had to pat it out with his hands, sticking them in the sand to relieve the burns afterwards. It was for nothing, in the end.

He’d needed a shock blanket, he remembered, the double entendre bringing out a hysterical laugh.

Sherlock glanced over, caught the distraction, and grabbed it before it could disappear. He took a step towards John, his hands coming off the wet metal, and shoved him hard in the chest with both hands.

John felt himself toppling back for the second time that day, and this time there was no one to break his fall.

He hit the ground with a wet thud, the muddy moisture immediately seeping through his jacket and his trousers, gone only dimly noticed, a tiny, insignificant thought in the back of his mind.

He opened his eyes to the silhouette of Sherlock as he reached for the cell tower.

A blinding flash of light seared his retinas, a simultaneous clap of thunder booming in his ears.

John blinked, his ears ringing, his vision blurred, his head wrapped up in a hurricane, pounding and throbbing; a maelstrom of wild confusion.

Sherlock was on the ground.

John pushed himself to a standing position, staggered two steps, and dropped back down to his knees. Hands, scrambling down Sherlock’s chest, fingers on his neck, curled around a pale, thin wrist.

Very faintly, he registered that he was speaking. What, he wasn’t sure. Insults, most likely. Incomprehensible babble. Curses.

He fumbled for the defibrillator, fingers snapping open the case. Jabbed for the power button. Reached back to Sherlock (stupid, stupid, so fucking mad), pushing aside the flaps of his coat and tearing at the buttons of his shirt.

One, then the other. Diagonally across. One on the chest and one on the side.

John raised his hands up to the sky. “Clear,” he breathed, not enough air in his lungs for anything louder than a whisper. He pressed the button to administer the shock.

(The irony was hardly lost on him.)

Sherlock’s body jolted. The machine beeped. Pause, two, three. No response.

Jab at the button. “Clear.”

Jolt. Beep. Pause. Nothing.

John gritted his teeth.

He pressed the button.

Thud. Beep. Pause.

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

Sherlock’s eyes opened, bright and hazy, strikingly pale in the dark stormy air.

“John?”

John grabbed Sherlock, hauled him up, and knocked their foreheads together hard enough that there was sure to be a bruise in the morning. He didn’t care. He could’ve cracked Sherlock’s skull and it wouldn’t have been enough.

“You,” John hissed, closing his eyes to avoid having to look at him, his hands travelling up to cup the back of his neck, where a light, quick, steady pulse fluttered beneath his fingers—which were shaking, he registered dimly; when did that happen? “You are _never—_ I can’t even—you fucking _idiot.”_

His heart was hammering in his chest; surely his ribs were to break if this continued on for any longer. He didn’t realize how heavily he was breathing, couldn’t hear the raggedness of his own breaths. His eyes were kept closed, forehead pressed to forehead, chest heaving as he sucked in their shared air with a frantic desperation.

Around them, the storm raged on.

Slowly, John opened his eyes.

Sherlock stared back with eyes like molten metal, intensity tenfold at this distance. Another round of what felt very much like electricity shot down John’s spine.

 _Shit,_ John thought, but didn’t pull away.

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed, then widened, something akin to realization crossing his face.

“Shit,” John said out loud, a whisper of a voice.

John blinked, and then Sherlock was smiling, a small little crooked smile that favoured the right corner of his mouth.

“You’re an idiot,” Sherlock said.

 _You’re one to talk,_ John started to say, and then Sherlock’s hand was at the back of his neck, the other placed lightly on the left side of his face, and Sherlock tilted his head and leaned in and closed the distance between them and every ounce of John’s mind was dashed away.

It was not a kiss to be envied. The wind was screaming a banshee’s cry, whipping at their frames, twisting around their bodies, whirling and lashing all around; the air was thrumming with sparks, buzzing and humming and popping with every rumble of the rain. The two of them were dripping with water and splattered with mud, shivering and shaking and burning up all at once. It was cluttered chaos, a muddled mess, neither of them in their right minds, but they went on, hands carding through wet tangled hair; not enough, it will never be enough—the space surrounding them tinged with heat and want and desperation.

If a strike of lightning streaked down the tower, splashed onto the ground, streamed into their bodies, up one leg and down the other—John didn’t think he would’ve noticed.

When Sherlock parted he kept his hand in John’s hair, the other cupping his face, thumb brushing across his cheek. His eyes were glimmering, crinkling at the corners. Smile bright enough to light up the entire sky.

John opened his mouth, closed it, licked his lips.

“So,” he said. “That.”

“Yes,” Sherlock murmured. “That.”

John swallowed. “How are we feeling about… that?”

Sherlock leaned in until their lips were nearly touching again. “Feeling rather good about it, to be perfectly honest.”

John breathed out a quiet laugh.

Sherlock quirked a smile at John and then backed away, turning his attention to his shirt—rips and popped buttons and all.

He made a thoughtful noise. “Well, it seems that our suspect is indeed innocent.”

Exasperation crept into John's voice. “You could’ve proven it some other way instead of getting struck by lightning.”

Sherlock hummed, the corner of his lip tilting up. “I’d say this was a success.”

John drew in a breath and then stopped. Sherlock smirked, and began to slide his shirt off his shoulders (which was beyond the tailor and even Mrs. Hudson’s wizardry-level sewing skills at this point).

John quickly averted his eyes. He heard a snicker.

“We have just snogged for five minutes,” Sherlock said, picking up his coat and putting it on, “during which you had a hand up what was left of my shirt. Is your modesty only just now catching up to you?”

John snorted, and then grinned, and then laughed, light and giddy.

“Well,” he said, “that was a shitty first kiss, anyways.”

Sherlock brow furrowed. “What makes you think that?”

John giggled. And giggled some more. Possibly he was in shock. (Ha.)

“Well, for starters, we’re in the middle of a lightning storm.”

Sherlock furrowed some more. “So?”

“And you have just nearly died.”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. He had very dexterous eyebrows, John noticed, and he really shouldn’t be thinking about eyebrows when he had just kissed Sherlock Holmes. In fact, he didn’t think he should be thinking about anything other than the fact that he kissed Sherlock Holmes for the rest of his life. He was fine with that, actually.

“Are you joking?” Sherlock said. “That’s the best part.”

John opened his mouth to respond when a sudden flash of lightning went off all around, a sharp, heavy clap of thunder echoing in their ears. John imagined bolts scurrying down the cell tower, guided by the wire, escaping to the ground, fractals of charge spreading across the very surface they were located above. He shivered.

“Oh,” Sherlock said, eyes glittering with something sly. “You like it. You’re attracted to danger, John. To _me.”_

“Get off it,” John muttered.

“It’s true,” Sherlock countered.

“God help me,” John said, “I’m bloody insane, aren’t I?”

Sherlock said cheerfully, “And you say I’m the mad one.”

“Well, there can only be one. We can’t both be mad.”

“Says who?”

The rain seemed to be letting go of its grip against the world, now, no longer pachinko balls slamming down but small marbles, light grey pebbles, gently pattering onto the earth. It was fair to say that the storm had significantly receded since they had first arrived at the hill. Or perhaps it had just been so long—John wouldn’t know.

“We should head back,” John said.

Sherlock dipped his head down to rub their noses together, which John found simultaneously endearing and absurd—rather fitting, he thought.

“It’s freezing,” John said.

Sherlock took his arms around John and pulled him in.

John paused for a moment, and then he twisted his head around to look at Sherlock. “We’re really doing this, huh.”

In response, Sherlock pressed a kiss to the top of John’s head.

John found that he could not stop grinning, which was inconvenient because he wanted to kiss Sherlock again—now that he knew he could he didn’t think he wanted to do anything else ever again.

Around him, Sherlock’s arms tightened. “How are you feeling?” Sherlock asked, _sotto voce._

“Cold,” John answered honestly. “And hot.” _Excited. Hopeful. Unbelievably, ridiculously happy._ “I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. You?”

“A bit shocked.”

The look John gave him could’ve made young children cry, but when directed to Sherlock just made him laugh instead.

“But seriously,” John said, “we have to get out of here.”

“The storm’s passing,” Sherlock argued.

“You still haven’t solved the case.”

“The only suspect left is his aunt. I’ll phone Lestrade later.”

“Later,” John said blandly. “How about _now?”_

“John,” Sherlock said with a sigh in his voice. “Must we do this right now?”

John drew in a deep breath, and then blew it out in a huff. He shifted closer (and it was amazing, how natural it felt), grumbling something that sounded like begrudging resignation.

Sherlock made a happy noise in his throat and buried his nose into John’s hair, which must have smelled atrocious—something akin to wet dog, John imagined. But Sherlock didn’t seem to mind, and John wasn’t one to complain.

John settled himself against Sherlock, resting his head against the junction of his shoulder and his chest. Breathed in. Took in the mingle of smoke and chemicals, a faint spicy dash of cologne. Achingly familiar.

It was home, he realized abruptly. London, Baker Street, a scruffy, cluttered flat. The pitiful wailings of a violin, punctuated by periods of calm, lilting melodies, a soft waltz on a rainy evening. Experiments in the form of unwelcome refrigerator inhabitants. Late nights and early mornings, washed down by hurried cups of scalding tea and stale, shitty hospital coffee. A wild dance of shadows down dark alleys, cast by the pale yellow wash of streetlights. Jagged edges, hairpin turns, blood, sweat, and tears, sharp and stinging and utterly, viscerally  _real._

Around them, the rain continued to fall, but it was light and gentle, now, butterfly wings and feathery drizzles, soothing away the damage and destruction. Around them, meadow flowers on the hill, bruised and battered from the storm, stirred from their hideaway and began to bloom.

**Author's Note:**

> allsovacant has made a gorgeous cover art for this fic <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Cover] Coup de Foudre](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14785853) by [allsovacant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allsovacant/pseuds/allsovacant)




End file.
